Subjects for Spring

By Mrs. Francis F. Steinthal
The Parents’ Review, 1899
Aunt Mai’s Budget, p. 48

II. Spring. Size 14 by 10, or 18 by 12.—A variety of subjects may be selected. If the season is favourable, the time has come again when we can sit out of doors and watch Nature in her varying moods, and see how far we have profited by our indoor work towards gaining power in representing her. It is a season of pale and delicate tints; nothing is heavy or dark now out of doors. The still bare trees are more apt to look a pale reddish tint than green; the skies even show a tender fitful blue, and are more changeable with their rapidly passing clouds than they are later in the season. Show how much you have already learnt by choosing a suitable bit for out-of-door study. Let it be simple and telling in effect. If sitting out of doors is impossible a flower study of the primrose will be accepted; when gathered with its surrounding earth, a piece almost of the bank on which it grows, carefully dug up and carried home in a box, a lovely study will be ready to paint.

Editor’s note: this is the second part of an article originally entitled “Subjects for April.”